#SFFpit

Writing a fantasy or science fiction novel is hard enough. Now, try pitching it in 140 characters or less. That’s the challenge set forth by #SFFpit, a twice-annual Twitter pitching contest.

Unlike Brenda Drake’s #PitMad, this contest is only for works of fantasy or science fiction. All age categories (PB, MG, YA, NA, and adult) are welcome. The next #SFFpit will take place in December 2017.

The Basics

The contest will happen on Twitter under a common hashtag (#SFFpit). During a 10-hour window on the chosen day, authors with completed manuscripts who are seeking representation or publication can tweet a pitch for their books (at most, once per hour).

Agents and editors will make requests by marking pitches as a favorite on Twitter. If your tweet is favorited, please follow the agent or editor’s submission guidelines. Throughout the day, we will have authors, agents, editors, and other folks stopping by on the hashtag to say hello. To make sure you know what’s happening, please sign up for my mailing list or follow me on Twitter.

For Agents and Editors

Thank you for your interest in #SFFpit! All literary agents and acquiring editors of science fiction / fantasy are welcome to participate. Here’s a quick cheat-sheet for how to participate:

Read pitches by searching for #SFFpit on Twitter. You can also include age category or genre hashtags in your search to narrow it down. To exclude a hashtag, put a minus (-) in front of it. So “#SFFpit #A #SF” would return adult sci-fi pitches, and “#SFFpit #FA -#MG” would return non-MG fantasy pitches.

Be sure to click the “Latest” tab if you’re searching on Twitter, to see all tweets in real-time instead of “top” tweets. A Twitter client like HootSuite or Tweetdeck is recommended.

Please tweet your submission guidelines on the #SFFpit hashtag when you arrive, so authors know how to respond to your request.

Make requests by hitting the Like button (A.K.A. favorite) on pitches where you’d like to see a query/partial.

Please feel free to make requests after the event ends, or even the next day. Authors love getting late requests. Thank you for participating!

Newest Pitch Rules: Retweeting is Back!

Last year, in response to agent feedback, we made some changes to the guidelines for this contest, like a shorter window and discouraging retweets by participants. That seemed to hurt the contest, so we’re going to compromise. These guidelines are current for the June 2017 event:

Shorter window. #SFFpit will run for 10 hours, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time.

Pitch limit. Participating authors get one tweet per hour, or 10 pitches total, per project. Use them wisely.

Retweeting is back! A year ago, we asked that you not retweet fellow authors’ pitches, because it made the feed a little crazy. However, it had other negative effects, most notably a drop-off in engagement and participation. So please feel free to retweet pitches to support your fellow authors. Just don’t go crazy. Please use Retweet-with-quote (Quote Tweet) to add a comment or word of encouragement if possible, to give your show of support a unique flare.

Please follow these guidelines to keep this event fair to everyone involved!

When to Pitch

This event happens twice per year: once in June, and once in December (the actual dates are chosen based on agent availability, and announced a few months in advance). On pitch day, we usually go from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. That’s a shorter window than usual, for the following reason.

Participants get 10 tweets total for the event. That’s one tweet per hour. This is a new rule, and designed to help reduce the flood of pitches for agents and editors.

Genre mashups, such as sci-fi romance, are welcome, as long as you’re not just trying to pass off your non-SFF book as something that it’s not. The agents and editors we’ve invited are primarily interested in fantasy and/or science fiction.

How to Pitch

Your pitch should contain four elements:

First and foremost, the hashtag for the contest, #SFFpit.

An indication of the book’s age category. If you don’t provide it, we’ll assume adult.

An indication of the books’s genre in existing terms. See below for hashtags.

A pitch for your book. Ideally, it should tell us character, desire, obstacle(s), and stakes.

You should tweet your pitch no more than 10 times throughout the day. Make sure each tweet is slightly different, as tweeting identical text is a violation of Twitter’s guidelines.

Hashtags for Age Category

Please use these hashtags to indicate the target age group for your book:

#PB – Picture book

#MG – Middle grade

#YA – Young adult

#NA – New adult

#A – Adult

Hashtags for Genre/Subgenre

Please use a hashtag to indicate the genre of your book. Because everything’s going to be fantasy or science fiction, I’d like to allow some subgenre tags as well:

#FA – fantasy

#CF – contemporary fantasy

#DF – dark fantasy

#EF – epic or high fantasy

#FR – fantasy romance

#HF – historical fantasy

#LF – literary fantasy

#AH – alternate history

#MYF – mythic fantasy

#SNS – sword & sorcery

#PN – paranormal

#UF – urban fantasy

#MR – magical realism

#SF – science fiction

#AF – apocalypse fiction

#LSF – literary science fiction

#ML – military science fiction

#PA – post-apocalyptic SF

#SFR – sci-fi romance

#SFT – sci-fi thriller

#SH – superhero / superhuman

#SO – space opera

#DS – dystopian

#SP – steampunk

#TT – time travel

#WW – weird west

Feel free to use two genre tags, as long as they’re compatible (e.g. #FA #DF), but there’s no pressing need to have more than one. For a description and some examples of these subgenres, see the SF/F Subcategories post by Connor Goldsmith of Fuse Literary. Please let me know — by e-mail or Twitter — if I haven’t specified your subgenre!

Pitching Guidelines

Here are some general guidelines to ensure fairness and respect during the contest.

Please DO:

Pitch completed, unpublished novels that represent your best work.

Include the contest hashtag, #SFFpit.

Use appropriate hashtags for age category and genre/subgenre.

Pitch your book at least once an hour to give everyone a chance to see it.

Make sure that your tweets are not identical. Twitter will block multiple instances of the same tweet, to be sure to move the hashtags around or change a character each time.

Follow submission guidelines. Scroll up in an agent or editor’s tweets to see what they are, and be sure to follow them.

Want to Say Thanks?

I do this to give back to the author community, so no thanks are necessary. Still, I wouldn’t mind if you decided to check out my book The Rogue Retrieval which was published by Harper Voyager in March 2016. If a Vegas magician infiltrating a medieval world sounds like it’s up your alley, you can buy it almost anywhere.

What to Expect from #SFFpit

Unfortunately, I can’t promise much to the authors, agents, and editors who participate in #SFFpit. I can tell you that it’ll be fun, and that participating might help authors improve their craft and query. Nevertheless, Twitter pitching contests are not a secret entrance to literary representation. In my guest post on #PitMad numbers for Brenda Drake, I estimated that the odds of success (having your pitch favorited by an agent or editor) were around 6%.

Pitching contests do work. So if you’re looking for representation or publication, please join us… you have nothing to lose, except for a few hours on Twitter. Let’s be honest, you were probably going to be on Twitter anyway.